Today, Jim, K8ELR; Ovide, K8EV, and I were at the museum.

The first thing I did today was to upgrade the firmware in the TenTec Omni VII. I thought this was going to be a lot more difficult than it turned out to be. All I had to do was download the package and run it. Worked like a charm.

I don’t recall what version we were running, but I can say that the new version does make the rig work differently. What’s most noticeable is that the filtering seems sharper. The TenTec website has a complete list of all the modifications they’ve made to the firmware, and it’s quite extensive. It makes me wonder how much better my IC-746PRO would be if its firmware was upgradeable.

Ovide then arrived and we were able to put a couple of kids on the air. Jeff, W2FFQ, was gracious enough to allow us to put junior operator Eve on the air. Eve, as it turns out, was in junior kindergarten, and Jeff has a daughter who is also in kindergarten. He got her to come into the shack and the two kids talked to one another. That was cool.

Finally, we tried installing EasyPAL on our computer so that we could try some SSTV. I say “tried” because the anti-virus software said that it detected something and wouldn’t let the install proceed. Consulting the EasyPAL website, it said that this sometimes happens and to disable the anti-virus software during the install. We did that, and it looked like the software was installed, but the program never got copied to the disk. We tried this a couple of times with the same result. By that time, we both were ready to close up shop, so we just gave up on that for now.